


The Shape of the Nearest Surface

by Jae



Category: Bandom, Empires, Panic At The Disco, The Academy Is...
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jae/pseuds/Jae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two pictures Tom didn't take.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shape of the Nearest Surface

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redsnake05](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redsnake05/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Composition and framing](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/773) by redsnake05. 



_before_

When Tom woke up on the floor of the bus it was morning. Or afternoon, or maybe early evening -- the sun was out, anyway. They'd been driving and playing and drinking and doing it all over again for so long that time had gotten all turned around, at least for Tom. The sun was out, so it wasn't the middle of the night, and they weren't playing, so it was probably earlier in the day. He had a watch, and a phone, and he knew there was a clock on the table behind him, but looking at any of them seemed like too much trouble. He didn't really give a fuck what time it was, anyway.

He blinked hard, and stretched a little, trying to remember why he was sleeping on the floor. As he turned over onto his side a bottle rolled for a few inches and then stopped. Tom blinked again and looked up at the couch across from him. William was reading a magazine, feet tucked up under him, squinting down at it even though his glasses were right on the table. To get to them he'd have to sit up, though, and Carden was slumped against him, his face pressed half into the couch cushion and half into William's thigh, looking like he'd fallen there several hours ago and hadn't moved since. Tom blinked again and laughed and then winced. It must have been a hell of a night, then. It was nothing new for Tom to wake up on the floor, but Carden usually made it back to his own bunk.

Tom reached up, feeling around on the table, and pushed William's glasses toward him. "Thanks," William said softly, and then slid his hand between his leg and Carden's head, holding him in place as he picked up his glasses. Carden shifted and mumbled something, turning his mouth against William's hand, and Tom reached up again for his camera. There was something about the way Carden was stretched out helplessly over the couch and the way William was coiled in on himself, or the way William's hand curved awkwardly but easily over Carden's cheek, or maybe it was the twist of William's lips as he looked down at Tom on the floor. Whatever it was, it looked like a picture to Tom. When he picked up his camera, it was one.

"Another one for the scrapbook," William said, and when Tom looked up at him again William smiled the strange half-smile he only used with Tom. Tom had about a hundred pictures of it by now but it didn't stop him from taking another. It never did.

William said, "Knock it off. You'll wake him up." Then he said, quickly, "Besides, you've got like a billion pictures of me by this point."

"Never heard you complain before," Tom said.

"No," William said. It was a minute before he smiled again and said, "You'll give me a complex. Do you only like me when I'm inside a frame?"

"I like you any way," Tom said.

"No," William said, "it's the other way around. You only like it when you're the one on the outside."

"That's too deep for me," Tom said, and William smiled his half-smile again. Tom got up slowly to all fours, and then all the way up, standing unsteadily in the doorway. "I'm gonna go sleep some more -- you want to come?"

"No," William said, picking his magazine up again, lifting it clear of Carden's hair. "I'm reading."

The next time Tom saw William and Carden they were fighting. It figured, Tom thought as he made his way back to the dressing room, that the only time they got along was when one of them was asleep. They were leaning up against the wall, arguing in the way they did when they didn't want anyone to know they were arguing, but they didn't want it enough to actually stop arguing.

"You said, you fucking promised," Carden said, his voice hoarse and tight, "you fucking said you'd do it, Bill, but I don't know why I'm surprised. You always make me do it --"

"I make you do nothing," William said coolly, "I couldn't if I tried and I'm sure as fuck not trying."

"I don't know why I'm surprised," Carden said. "I don't know why I believe a fucking word you say."

"Don't you?" William said, looking over at him, and to Tom's surprise Carden didn't snap back at him or yell or even reach out and shake him, the way Tom had seen him do before. Instead he brought both hands up to his face in a sudden strange gesture, not as if he were holding his head but as if he wanted to cover it, as if there were something he might see, or say, that he desperately wanted to stop. William didn't say anything, or even take the opportunity to walk away. Instead he reached out and lifted one of Carden's hands away from his face gently and then replaced it with his own, his long fingers stretching up into Carden's hair.

Tom had his camera but he knew better, he knew he shouldn't take a picture of this. It was too private, an apology or an alliance or just a brief respite from the years-long battle that was their friendship, but either way it was theirs, and not his to take. Tom knew better but he had his camera and he couldn't help it. They were a picture, and Tom took it.

William and Carden both looked up at him then, their hands falling to their sides. Tom took a picture of that, too, their hands trapped between them against the battered wooden wall, still just touching.

"Hey," Carden said, and then he didn't say anything else.

"Hey," Tom said, "good show," and walked into the dressing room.

When he got back to his hotel room William was waiting for him. They didn't share all the time; he and William were the kind of people who needed a little distance between them. Not a lot, just enough. Tom was okay with that. He was more than okay with William waiting here for him, though. "Where's Butcher?" he said. "I thought he was --"

"Let's fuck," William said, and Tom was more than okay with that too.

Afterwards William lay flat on his back and stared up at the ceiling, his pants still only unbuttoned. Tom rolled over slowly onto his side and then felt around on the floor, pretending he was looking for his shirt, but really just trying to snag his camera. When he had it he curled around it, flipping through the pictures he'd taken over the past few days. He liked to do it sometimes, only sometimes, just to remind himself of what he'd been there for, what he'd seen.

"Look at you," William said, his voice light and cool. "You're like a miser counting up your gold." It was the kind of thing William knew how to say, something that sounded silly but that stung until Tom couldn't think of anything else. Tom didn't know how to say that kind of thing, at least not on purpose, so he just said, "Fuck you," and went back to looking at his pictures.

It was different, though. The pictures weren't, of course, of course Tom knew they were the same as they'd always been, the same as they'd been since he took them. It was Tom who was different, maybe, because he saw something now, something he hadn't seen before, something he hadn't seen when he took them. He looked at William's hand against Carden's mouth, over Carden's face, their fingers just touching against the wall. He looked and he looked and he saw.

"I tried to tell you," William said quietly, "but you know how you are, you never believe anything unless you see it for yourself. You know how you are." William sounded different than he had before, not cool and distant but almost pleading, but that didn't change the way his words stung. Tom rolled away from him, onto the floor, where he crouched with his camera still in his hands. He was shaking.

"Tom," William said, and looked at him with that half-smile Tom had seen a hundred times, a thousand. Tom had seen William look at him that way a thousand times, and now he could see the way William looked at someone else and he could see the difference, finally, he could see it. He could see it a hundred different ways in the pictures he'd taken.

Tom threw his camera against the wall over the bed as hard as he could.

William yelled his name and outside the door he heard Carden say, "What the fuck is going on in there?" He didn't know if he'd left the door unlocked or if Carden had a key but the door opened and Carden stood there. From where he was sitting Tom could see Carden looking at William, and he could see William looking at Carden. He could see everything. They looked like a picture, the way they looked at each other, Carden looming in the doorway, William lying on the bed. It was a picture of a beginning, Tom thought, and of an ending, and of a hundred different things Tom had thought he had but had never really known. They were a picture, Tom thought.

He didn't take it.

_after_

When Tom woke up Jon was sitting on the end of his bed watching him. Tom was going to say something like, "Isn't that my job?" or "Take a picture, it'll last longer -- I know," or even, "Did I leave the fucking door unlocked again?", but he was still sleepy enough that all he could manage to do was blink and push his hair out of his face. He didn't really do a great job of that, and Jon laughed and reached down and pushed Tom's hair out of his mouth. Tom tried to say something but before he could Jon kissed him.

Jon tasted like cigarettes and whiskey and the inside of an airplane and it was morning, Tom was pretty sure, and at least two of those things were probably a bad sign. When Jon stopped kissing him Tom was awake enough to sit up and say, "What are you doing here?"

"Let's fuck," Jon said, and some people might say that that wasn't an answer, some people might say that that lack of an answer was the very worst sign of all, but Tom wasn't most people and that was an answer he was never going to turn down from Jon. He didn't know how to.

Afterwards Jon lay back on Tom's bed and said, "Jesus, I'm fucking wiped out. Is there any coffee?"

"No, I'm pretty sure there isn't any coffee because it's really fucking early in the morning and I just woke up --"

"It's not that early. It's -- god, is it only ten thirty?"

"Are you still on west coast time?" Tom said, and he saw Jon flinch. Then Jon said, slowly,

"No, I'm pretty fucking sure I'm not on west coast time."

Tom said, "What are you doing here? It's a long fucking flight for a booty call."

Jon was quiet for a long moment, then he said, "How do you know -- how do you know if you got kicked out of your band?"

This time Tom flinched. Then he said, as carefully as he could, "In my experience, that's not really the kind of thing you have to wonder about." When Jon didn't answer he said, "Tell me what happened."

"Could I just -- could you just see if there's coffee, or anything to drink? I didn't want to -- I don't know what's wrong with me, I think I'm jet-lagged or something, I just -- I don't want to talk about it." When Tom waited stubbornly Jon said, "Tommy, please," and Tom got up and went to the kitchen.

He didn't have coffee. He had some orange juice, and water, and he brought back a glass of each. In the bedroom Jon was sitting on the floor in front of Tom's bookcase with a portfolio spread out in front of him. Without looking up he said, "You're kind of good at this, you know?"

"I can take a picture," Tom said.

"I meant fucking," Jon said, but when Tom didn't laugh he said, "Or, you know, the other too." When Tom held out both glasses Jon took the orange juice and said, "Thank you." Tom came closer and leaned over Jon's shoulder to see what he was looking at. Then he grabbed the pictures and took them away.

"No," he said. "I'm pretty sure this is a bad fucking idea, the way you've been talking. Drink your orange juice and then tell me what happened."

"What do you think happened? What happened was what always happens with these things."

Tom said, "I'm pretty sure that whatever you're talking about isn't what happened with me."

"I'm not -- this isn't about you, okay? I'm not going to fucking apologize for not getting kicked out of my band bad enough or hard enough or whatever -- you win that prize, I get it -- "

Tom sat down next to Jon on the floor and bumped against his shoulder, not gently. "Stop trying to pick a fight with me and tell me what happened. I thought you said recording was going good -- you said you had a bunch of new songs."

Jon drank the whole glass of orange juice before he answered. When he did, his voice was lower but he sounded just as angry. "We did -- Ryan and I did, anyway."

"They didn't like them, the other guys?"

"It's not -- I mean, no, obviously they didn't like them or I wouldn't fucking be here, but that's not the problem. I'm not a fucking baby, you don't like it, tell me what you don't like it and I'll fix it or I'll fight about it, I'm not -- that's not the problem." Jon took Tom's glass of water out of his hand and drank it like he was dying of thirst, gulping like he was trying to get something inside himself, something he hadn't realized he'd been losing. Then he said, "You should have seen -- Spencer just looked at us like, like somebody's dad, you know? He looked -- he looked fucking disappointed. And then Brendon said, he said, 'We're not saying -- we just thought you guys were done with this stuff, on the last one.' Like it's some kind of fucking phase, like they've been waiting for us to fucking grow out of it."

Jon finished Tom's water and then turned the glass slightly sideways, hefting it in his hand like he was gauging the weight. Tom took it away from him.

"I just -- I thought they like the last one, you know? I knew they didn't, I knew they didn't love it like I did but I thought -- I didn't think they were just humoring me. I didn't -- oh, fuck it. I don't even know why I care."

"Don't you?" Tom said, and Jon looked at him and then looked down at the floor.

Finally he said, "I don't really think I got kicked out of the band."

"That's good," Tom said.

"But I think -- I think there might not be a band anymore."

"Okay," Tom said, and Jon looked at him expectantly. Tom thought about what he should say next. While he was still thinking, Jon's phone rang. Jon looked at it and then said,

"I should -- it's Ryan," and Tom said,

"Sure."

Jon didn't take the phone out of the room, though. Instead he sat down on the floor on the other side of the bed. For a long time he didn't say anything, and then Tom heard him speak in a low rush, like there was something he'd been keeping for a long time, something he'd been wanting to say out loud. It wasn't for Tom, so he didn't listen to the words, just the sound of Jon's voice, fast and then, gradually, slower and slower but never quite running out.

While he listened he looked at the photos Jon had pulled out, the photos Tom had taken away from him. They were pictures from Panic's tour, the pictures Tom had taken when they were the only ones he could take. He looked at the ones Jon had been looking at first, the pictures of the other guys, of the tour, the ones everyone had seen. Tom didn't spend a lot of time looking at his old photos like this -- there was something to be said for not living in the past. Tom never said it, but still, there was something. He looked at them now, because he thought that for a long time he might not want to think about them again.

Behind those photos were other shots Tom had taken, pictures of Jon that no one had seen, no one but him and Jon. Jon asleep, unguarded, his hair in his face and his mouth open, and Jon awake, looking at Tom like he was waiting for something, waiting impatiently which was the only way Jon ever waited. And then, finally, there were photos no one had ever seen, not even Jon, only Tom, the ones he pulled out sometimes to look, only sometimes, just to remind himself. In the pictures Jon was smiling, pleased and a little surprised, like he'd gotten what he was waiting for and it was different than he'd thought it would be, different and better. Sometimes when Jon was far away, on another coast or another continent or just in a room with his band, Tom liked to look at the pictures and remind himself that Jon had been there, and was coming back.

On the other side of the room he heard Jon say good-bye, and then get up slowly to stand over Tom. "Listen," he said, "I should -- I have to go, I can't leave Ryan to handle everything himself. I have to go back."

Tom looked up at him. "So there is a band then, after all?" he said.

"Yeah," Jon said. "Just -- maybe not the one I thought there was." He smiled then, suddenly, and without thinking about it Tom reached out for his camera. It would be a picture of a beginning, he thought, and of an ending, and one day, one day Jon might want to see it, he might want to be reminded. His camera was across the room, though, and when Tom stood up to go get it Jon grabbed his arm.

"I'm coming back," he said, and without thinking about it Tom said,

"I know."

Jon smiled then, the way he'd been smiling at Tom for a long time, since long before Tom had known how to see it. He looked like a picture, Tom thought, the kind of picture he'd been taking his whole life. His camera was just across the room, he could get it and then he'd have this picture forever, he could look at it sometimes, just sometimes when he wanted to, when he wanted to remind himself. He could look at it sometimes, the way he always had, when Jon wasn't here, when Tom wasn't sure, when all he could remember were the things he'd lost, the things he was going to lose. That's what pictures were for.

"Hey," Jon said again, and kissed him, fast and sweet. He still tasted like airplanes and bad ideas and he was going away, Tom knew, he was going away and then he was coming back and Tom could take a picture right now, to remind him that Jon had been here, to help him remember Jon would be back. Jon smiled at him and he was a picture, Tom thought.

He didn't take it.


End file.
